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‘Just to let you know I haven’t forgotten,’ he smiled, giving her the flowers, tilting her chin to lay his lips gently against hers.
He had brought her buttercups, the flower so special between them. He had picked one and held it beneath her chin, so long ago. Seven years, if you counted.
‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice – my buttercup girl,’ he’d whispered, kissing her for the first time.
‘Alice?’ His voice invaded her thoughts. ‘You were miles away, lass.’
‘No, love – years away.’ She felt her cheeks pinking. ‘I was remembering when you first gave me buttercups. And I know I shouldn’t be thinking back – not today, especially – but there’s something I want to tell you, Tom; something I promised more than a year ago.’
‘To love, honour and obey?’ he teased.
‘No. Something else I promised and I’ve made up my mind to tell you, today.’
‘And what if I don’t want to know?’
‘You must know, Tom. For both our sakes. What I did – it wasn’t what you thought …’
‘How do you – did you – know what I thought?’
‘Because I saw betrayal in your eyes, and it wasn’t like that.’
‘I still don’t want to know, Alice.’
‘And I still want to tell you. When I held our firstborn, I said it would be.’
‘Sweetheart.’ He reached for her, holding her tightly. ‘This has been the best year of my life – don’t spoil it?’
‘But you’ve got to know about the child, Tom – how it really was.’
‘You call him the child, always. He’s Drew, Miss Julia’s son, now. He’s a Sutton.’
‘Yes.’ Oh, he was a Sutton, all right! ‘But Tom, will you let me tell you? Not meaning to hurt you, but won’t you hear me out? I love you so much, you see, that I can’t bear to have this thing hanging over us.’
‘All right, then. We’ll talk about it tonight – there’ll be no pleasing you, until we do. When Daisy is in her cot, we’ll talk about it.’ He nodded towards the mantel clock, smiling. ‘And round about now, a year ago, you were saying, I will – so what have you to say to me?’
‘I love you, Tom Dwerryhouse; so much that it’s like a pain inside me, sometimes. I love you so much that I’ve got to tell you.’
‘And I love you so much, wife darling, that I’ll listen – but later. So does a man get a kiss, and his dinner, then?’
They sat either side of the fire, Tom with a mug of ale, Alice twisting the stem of a wedding present glass, gazing down at the last of the Christmas sherry.
‘Happy anniversary, lass. Thank you for Daisy and for the twelve-month past. It’s been good, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’
‘I know it. But will you love me as much when I’ve told you?’
‘Dammit, woman!’ He hit his knee with his hand. ‘Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?’
‘You said that tonight you’d listen …’
She rose to kneel at his feet, her hand on his knees, remembering the quickness of his temper, the highs and lows of his emotions. ‘It has always bothered me, Tom, that you thought I married so soon after your death – after they told me you’d been killed, I mean.’
‘Aye – and I’ll admit it bothered me, an’ all. When the war ended – when I got back to England – I came to Rowangarth, looking for you. I thought you’d have waited. Even though you thought me dead, I’d never have imagined that so soon after, you’d take another man to your –’
‘To my bed?’ she interrupted, sharply. ‘Make a child with him?’
‘Since you put it that way – yes.’ He winced at the directness of her words. ‘But Alice love, must we rake up the past? It’s you and me, now, and Daisy. That war is over, and best forgotten and all the misery it caused.’
‘I was in France, too, don’t forget. I saw the degradation of men treated no better than animals. But it can’t be forgotten until what it did to you and me is brought into the open, Tom.’
‘You’re set on me knowing, aren’t you? Even if you hurt me?’
‘You won’t be hurt – angry, more like. Reuben knew about it, and Julia. And Nathan Sutton, an’ all. They’ll bear out my story.’
‘Seems the world and his wife knew; everyone but Tom Dwerryhouse. When you walked in on me that day at Reuben’s house – why didn’t you tell me, then?’
‘When I’d just seen a ghost? When you were standing there, back from the dead? And you didn’t help any, Tom. You turned away from me as if I were beneath contempt – tipped your cap to me and called me milady. You knew how to hurt!’
‘I’d come looking for you. I couldn’t go to Rowangarth; I was dead – or so the Army had told my folks.’
‘I understand that, and that you were a deserter. You had to be careful, or they could have had you shot.’
‘Not any more. The war was over, by then. They’d have put me in prison, though – still could …’
‘There’ll be an amnesty for you, soon – for all deserters. The newspapers say so.’
‘Happen. But we are talking about now, and about you and me. I went to Reuben’s house. I thought he’d get word to you that I was back. I couldn’t wait to see you, touch you …’
‘And instead he told you I was married and had a child; that I was Lady Sutton, newly widowed.’
‘Something like that. It was as if he’d slammed a fist into my face. You wedded and bedded and though your being a widow made you your own woman again, I knew you’d never leave your son and come away with me, even if you still loved me – and it seemed you didn’t.’
‘But I did leave my son. I left him with Julia and her ladyship because Rowangarth was where he belonged – his inheritance. And I followed you here, Tom, wanting to tell you the truth of it, even then.
‘You’ve said I never use my son’s name – always call him the child – and you are right. I had little to do with him – I was ill after he was born. I wanted to die. I tried to. I’d been nursing Giles, you see. He died in the ’flu epidemic’
‘Died of it – like my mother did.’
‘Just as she did, Tom.’ She rose to her feet, backing away from him, returning to her chair, standing behind it as if to shelter from the fury she feared would come.
‘I had a difficult confinement, Tom. When my pains started, we couldn’t get the doctor. He was working all the hours God sent – half of Holdenby was down with that ’flu. Julia was with me from start to finish. She’d just delivered the child when Doctor James arrived.
‘There was only time to tell Giles he’d had a son before he died. Her ladyship was sitting beside his bed. She said, afterwards, that he’d gripped her hand, as if he understood.’
She stopped, taking in a shuddering breath, tilting her chin defiantly, wondering, now that she had started the awful business, where it would end.
‘Go on,’ Tom urged.
‘I had a fever. Doctor James said I’d taken influenza from Giles. I was so ill they kept the baby away from me – didn’t want him to get it. Julia was in a bad way. She’d just come back from France. Andrew had been killed only days before the Armistice